DOK Industry Podcast
Preserving Legacy: The Quest for Peru’s Film Pioneer, Nora de Izcue
In this What’s Up With Docs episode, Toni Bell speaks with the filmmaking team behind “Searching for Nora”: Claudia Chavez and Christine Mladic Janney. “Searching for Nora” celebrates the life and artistry of Nora de Izcue, the first Peruvian filmmaker to gain international acclaim and a passionate advocate for social justice and cultural preservation.
The conversation explores Claudia’s experience at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV in Cuba—a film school co-founded by Nora and novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez—Christine’s connections to Peru and her advocacy for Quechua-speaking communities.
They discuss their collaborative work on “Searching for Nora”, which follows their quest to locate original prints of Nora’s seminal film, “Runan Caycau”.
Their journey touches on the vital role of film archives, the significance of who holds them, and the broader challenges of being a documentary filmmaker and a mother. They also reflect on the past and present state of filmmaking in Peru, particularly in light of recent attacks on the National Film Law, which led to nationwide work stoppages and strikes.
Length: 72:32
Recorded on October 22, 2024
Moderator: Toni Bell
Toni Acbebe Bell is the creator/host of the What’s Up with Docs Podcast. She is the impact producer for the award-winning film “A Woman on the Outside”, an impact consultant for RePresent Justice, and an upcoming documentary-building initiative on centering survivors of trauma from a human rights framework. She was the Impact Strategist for Odyssey Impact and Looky Looky Pictures, Abigal Disney’s The American Dream, and Other Fairy Tales. She has been a speaker, panelist, reviewer, mentor, and juror at documentary film festivals, labs, and funds such as the California Humanities, Dok Leipzig, EFM, and others. She holds an MA in Visual Anthropology (USC), an MFA in Creative Writing (Naropa University), and a certificate in professional screenwriting (UCLA.)
Guests
Claudia Chavez is a Peruvian producer and, recently, a co-director. She has produced such films as “The Catch” (short fiction film by Thais Drassinower, premiere at Tribeca Festival). She is also the producer of Hakuchu Munayta, a feature documentary by Augusto Zegarra. In addition, she is the producer and co-director of the documentary Searching for Nora, currently in production, which was supported by the Sundance Institute Humanities Sustainability Fellowship and The Wenner-Gren Foundation and been selected in the Co-production forum of the Guadalajara International Film Festival and DocsBarcelona. Claudia studied a production workshop at the EICTV in Cuba and has a Master's Degree in Audiovisual Distribution at ECAM in Madrid. She currently divides her time between Spain and Peru.
Filmography:
“Takanakuy”, 2022, Producer
“The Saint of the Impossible”, 2020, Service Producer
“The Catch”, 2019, Producer
Christine Mladic Janney is a Director/Producer and Sociocultural Anthropologist who is passionate about using film as a tool for political and social change and taking a decolonial and feminist approach to doing so. She has been the recipient of awards such as the Sundance Institute Humanities Sustainability Fellowship (2022) and the Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ethnographic Film from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (2023).
Her short documentary film “Runasimiwan Kawsay (Living Quechua)”, featuring a Peruvian language activist and her efforts to strengthen a Quechua-speaking community in NYC, premiered at the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival and went on to screen at over 30 international festivals and events. She holds a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology and an Advanced Certificate in Culture and Media from New York University.
DOK Industry Podcast 2024 is realised in partnership with POC2 Programmers of Colour Collective and What’s Up With Docs Podcast, and supported by Docs-in-Orbit and film.macht.kritisch - The podcast about the *other* cinema.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.
